PSY220 - 1. Social Facilitation/Social loafing/Group performance + decisions Conformity & obedience Flashcards
Social psychology
Beliefs, Feelings, Attitudes, Emotions→ Behaviour → Other People(and their thoughts, feeling, attitudes + behavior)
Social science
Social psychology
scientific study of reciprocal influence of indiv + social environment
cycle of influence
abstract theory + concrete practice
Keen on solving real world problems (racism)
Mixture of basic + applied research
Social psychology
traffic in probabilities, likelihood + correlations, rather than absolute laws
Despite enormous variability of behaviour, possible to extract some basic patterns of human behaviour
Intrinsic motivation
perform better rather than when rewarded – statistically likely, better than chance
Could this pattern have happened by chance?
Phenonmenon doesn’t happen to all people all the time
Intuitions
important to verify common sense + folk intuition with data based objective
must be tested against empirical data
sometimes two opposing clichés may seem equally intuitive, counter intuitive
each one makes sense: which intuition makes sense with the data
SOCIAL FACILITATION
Triplett (1897): Got 40 children to wind up fishing reels, alone/side-by-side Dv: inches of line – objective variable Side by side condition yielded more line Efforts to replicate results were mixed Some results were the opposite
SOCIAL FACILITATION: Zajonc
presence of others increases arousal (physiologically measurable, i.e. heart-rate, sweating palms, etc.).
SOCIAL FACILITATION: Zajonc
Arousal energizes you + facilitates dominant response (comes most quickly + easily). Arousal activates thoughts + motor responses that are the most practiced (accessible).
SOCIAL FACILITATION: Zajonc
On a well-learned task (reciting the alphabet/your birthday), the dominant response is the correct response.
On a poorly-learned task (naming state capitols/your mother-in-law’s birthday), the dominant response is likely to be incorrect.
SOCIAL FACILITATION
an audience should improve your performance on tasks easy for you and hamper your performance on tasks more difficult.
SOCIAL FACILITATION THEORIES:
Zajonc – mere presence: Presence of others arousing + enhances dominant responses
social, mere presence
diff theories work better in diff conditions. Current, ongoing work looks at isolating these conditions.
THE “COCKROACH” EXPERIMENT
The easy maze vs. The “hard” maze
Varied the walls of the maze
Glass walls – cockroaches watching or not
Facilitation is fundamental to all species
Cockroach arousal systems are diff
Data consistent with this idea
SOCIAL FACILITATION THEORIES: Evaluation apprehension
Cotrell: has to be a threat of error
Audience but they were blindfolded: effect was reduced but not fully eliminated
Concern for how others evaluating us
perform best when collector is slightly superior
SOCIAL FACILITATION THEORIES: Evaluation apprehension
Arousal lessons when high status group is diluted by adding people opinions don’t matter to us
People who worry most about other evaluations are the ones most affected by presence
facilitation effects Greatest when others unfamiliar + hard to keep an eye on
social, not mere presence
SOCIAL FACILITATION THEORIES: distraction-conflict model
Conflict between paying attention to others and paying attention to the task
SOCIAL FACILITATION THEORIES: distraction-conflict model
Baron: distraction removes attention on task at hand – increases arousal,
can be distracted by other distractions
Nonsocial distractions can also facilitate easy tasks + impair difficult tasks
non social/mere presence
SOCIAL LOAFING
presence of others cause us to relax When efforts are pooled + performance of any one individual is difficult or impossible for observers to determine.
Anonymity is a gateway to loafing
Ringelmann – french
Compared agricultural machines + farmers in strength in pulling rope
whole less than sum of the parts Other ppl should increase performance (a)groups less coordinated (more interference – nothing to do with individual effort) tug of war is clumsy/disorganized (b) people try less hard in groups
SOCIAL LOAFING
tendency for ppl to exert less effort when pull their efforts toward common goal than when individually accountable
Free riders: benefit from group but give little in return
SOCIAL LOAFING
being observed increases evaluation concerns, social facilitation occurs
being in a crowd decreases evaluation concerns, social loafing occurs
exert more effort when outputs individually identifiable
Latane:
either alone/part of team, but their teammates in separate rooms.
task: To scream and yell and make as much noise as possible! (Dependent variable: decibel level)
Latane:
Alone – (supposedly) 1 other person- 82% on average 5 other people- 74%
lose about quarter of yelling power when they think there are 5 other ppl
alone better at generating ideas
robust across cultures
more judicious about expending efforts + resources
What reduces loafing?
- identifiability – degree to which output is unidentifiable
- importance of task – if not identifiable, still less when it’s a task ppl care about
- own efforts necessary for successful outcome – believe if they will fail without their effort
What reduces loafing?
4.threat of punishment for poor performance – requires identifiable except group punishment
5.small group
6.group cohesiveness – rather than doing same task, division of labour
Latane talked about it as a negative
Social loafing in every day life
Those who see themselves as less capable strive to keep up with the rest of the group
Group size
big crowd/cover of night-lose Inhibition
attribute behavior to situation, everyone is doing it, they don’t see it as their own choice
Physical anonymity
Anonymity can make someone less self-conscious and more responsive to cues presented
• anonymity can lead to affection as well as violence
Arousing and distracting activities
Self reinforcing pleasure in doing an impulsive act while observing others doing it also
enjoy intense positive feelings and feel close to others
Diminished self-awareness
self-aware exhibit greater consistency between words and their deeds
Mirrors and cameras, small towns, bright lights, name tags, undistracted quiet, individual clothes
Karau & Williams-collective effort model
Big tradeoff: Effort is fatiguing
seek to optimize ratio between input + groups output – seek optimal balance
Adaptive mechanism: if I tried 110%, I would burn out
Make choices when to go big or hold out
Social Compensation
Hold out when not necessary
Try even harder necessary
Compensate for slackers in group task
only in the collective condition – contributions pooled together
Social Compensation
Coactive condition – other ppl there, on same task but output is judged individually
collective condition brings about these effects
scored better on math test when partner was female than male – expecting females to be worse at math
Allocation of resources unconsciously – strategic calculation outside of consciousness
GROUP DECISION MAKING: risky shift
Stoner (1961): risky shift later evidence suggested the opposite
ppl took more risks when with group than by themselves
tendency for groups to accentuate initial leanings
GROUP DECISION MAKING: risky shift
Groups less risky – afraid of leading group down a garden path
Later studies found the opposite: groups are more conservative
Group polarization effect
Group discussion amplifies initial group inclination
group produced enhancement of members pre-existing tendencies not the split within the group
Group polarization in every day life
Accentuation phenomenon: overtime, initial differences among groups of university students become accentuated
Like-minded people associate increasingly with one another, amplifying their tendencies
Easier for small groups to rally like-minded people, crystallized defuse hatreds and mobilize lethal force
What creates group polarization (Moscovici)?
- Greater # of arguments in favor of one position: arguments in favour you never heard before, hearing them validates your position
- Informational influence* may solidify ideas that used to be vague.: when our own ideas + opinions are vague we need others to solidify our opinions
What creates group polarization (Moscovici)?
3.Social categorization: Clear boundaries drawn betw ingroup + outgroup.: hard distinctions, ppl unconsciously exagerrate diff betw us + them, overestimate extremity of own + other’s opinion which further polarizes opinions
Just stating opinions, polarization still occurs
